On the train around 8 last night heading into lower Manhattan, I was sitting next to a mother and her two boys. The one who caught my attention in particular was probably about six years old, but looked like a chubby man. He had big curly hair, glasses that seemed embedded into his face as if he’d worn them for a lifetime, and a square jaw. I don’t remember if he had freckles, but he seems like the kind of kid who would have – and wrinkles.

We were on the D train, and running parallel on the other side of the platform must have been the A. The brother of the boy that I just described, probably also around six or seven years old with curly hair, stood up and told his mother that they should try to catch the other train that had already stopped at the station as we pulled in. There were lots of people in between and the likelihood of their catching it after also crossing the platform wasn’t that great, something his mother must have realized. She decided that they would wait until a later station to try to make the transfer. I don’t know what awaited that little boy at the end of a ride on the A, but whatever it was was enough to make him cry at the thought of missing out.

Whenever children start to cry I always feel like they’re just joking, and I am often amused. Then I see the actual tears, and while my amusement does not give way to guilt, it is usually accompanied by it. The tears come almost immediately which is also quite astonishing. It is as if their faces are bipolar, transforming from smooth to wrenched accompanied by Bellagio-type water works at the flip of a switch. I always want to ask “How did you do that ?!” It is only then that I’m reminded that they are in fact children. And that they are in fact crying. And that they are in fact far from joking, because “issues” are “problems”, and their “problems” are very real, and huge. Like missing the A.

As we left the station that boy stood and looked through the windows of the D at the A on the other side as they both rode parallel through the tunnel until it disappeared. He cried more. The trains eventually met again after a few minutes and the mother’s decision was vindicated, her quiet resolve rewarded. What mattered most though was the response of the curly haired, bifocaled little man to his brother when he first started crying. He put his little hand on his brother’s back and said, “Don’t cry… Life is good.”